In addition to OHDS’s exemplary programs of Art, Computers, and PE, there’s now Drama—our newest specialty class. 3rd through 8th grade classes (including a middle school mixed-grade elective) meet in the Drama Room, and for 40 minutes, students explore the voice, movement, and language of theater arts.

This semester, we created “frozen statues” in response to prompts (for example, imagine a UFO is hovering above the OHDS play yard and suddenly our principal is beamed!). From there we went on to human tableaux depicting Longfellow’s poem, The Arrow and the Song. We eloquently articulated tongue twisters, watched a video of Lucille Ball presenting the Vitameatavegamen commercial (then performed our own!), delivered Shakespearean renditions of the sonnet, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day, and collapsed into riotous laughter watching each other improvise “Hitchhiker,” “Party Host,” and “Puppet Master.” 8th graders performed a short play called C.O.P.S. for the 3rd grade, demonstrating how Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, and Spelling are essential elements of good writing, and the elective class presented a modified version of the musical, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.